Free time is often celebrated as the achievement of modernity, the moment in which we are allowed to stop producing and devote ourselves to ourselves. But in a society that measures personal value on productivity, it risks becoming a further obligation, to be filled and optimised. From the scholé Greek, a privilege of free men dedicated to contemplation, to the timed time of the factory and to workers’ struggles for weekends and holidays, free time was transformed from a privilege to a collective right. Today, work no longer defines who we are: it is often unstable and precarious. Thus free time becomes a new arena of pressure, transforming into an obligation for productivity and self-realization, rather than true rest. However, to be truly free, free time must stop serving to prove something and return to simply being ours.
From the Greek scholé to the timed time of the factory
In Ancient Greece there was no “free time” in the modern sense, there was a similar word but with a profoundly elitist meaning: scholē.
The term scholē in fact it indicated the time dedicated to study, thought, conversation: it was considered the “highest” time, the one that allowed human beings to develop. Even Aristotle and Plato themselves believed that fully human life coincided with this “contemplative activity”.
However, as Hannah Arendt observes in “The Human Condition”, what we now call free time was born in a context in which life was dominated by the need to work to survive. Only a privileged few could dedicate themselves to activities that were not linked to material need, such as reflection, study or political participation. Slaves, manual workers and women were instead completely absorbed in daily work. In this sense, free time was born as a privilege.
With the Industrial Revolution, however, things began to change: work became measurable and marked by the clock, and what remained was time to rest, recreate and, slowly, claim a collective right to recover one’s energies.
The Industrial Revolution and free time as a political right
With the Industrial Revolution, the pace of life changed profoundly: paid work occupied most of the day and what remained was no longer a luxury, but a necessary space to recover the energy needed for work. That time, previously the prerogative of a few, became an achievement to be defended by all. The workers’ struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries, as documented by the historian Thompson in his study on disciplined time, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” published in 1967, transformed free time into a collective right: the weekend, paid holidays, eight-hour working hours were born.
But in the same period the entertainment industry established itself: organized holidays, tourist villages, mass recreational programs.
In this context, the figure of Fantozzi emerges, a symbol of free time that seems to be another task to be carried out: breaks become disguised obligations, including company trips, forced trips and sports tournaments organized by the office. Rest, therefore, is no longer a personal space, but is transformed into a continuation of the control and discipline of working life, where even fun must be productive and shared according to the rules imposed by the company.
Free time between work identity and personal fulfillment
For much of the Italian twentieth century, stable work, the famous “permanent job”, was not just a contract: it was the backbone of personal identity. Having a secure job meant feeling recognized, rooted in society, and having a defined role in the world. As ironically told by Checco Zalone, a permanent job promised more than economic security: it guaranteed dignity, belonging and the reassuring feeling of being someone, because, in those years, a person’s value seemed to be measured above all through what they did for a living.
Today this promise seems to have been broken. Work is often intermittent, changeable, uncertain and that model of security and employment is no longer guaranteed, people often change jobs, live on short contracts, or work remotely.
And so if work no longer defines who we are, we start looking for ourselves in our free time. This automatically generates a new type of pressure: it seems that this free time must automatically be reoccupied in reading, travelling, training in preparation for marathons, etc. Rest thus becomes a path of self-realization in which there is no room for rest, an attempt to prove something (to others and to ourselves).
Gen Z and the modern revolution
Generation Z is growing up in this context, trying to free itself from the idea of living only to work, preferring more flexible methods, often online, and aiming to live with the bare necessities. Seek balance, reject the heroism of the extraordinary and renegotiate the value of sacrifice. However, he lives in a world where every moment can be shown and judged: free time is no longer just an experience, but a continuous narrative on social media: it’s not enough to feel good, you also have to show it. And when rest becomes representation, it loses its spontaneity.
Maybe today the problem is not having little free time, but investing too many expectations in it: we always try to feel productive, accomplished, special. To enjoy it again, we should give it a simpler meaning, a space in which to rest, without having to prove anything.
Free time, to be truly such, is time without purpose. A time that is not useful for recovering energy to become productive again. Only then does free time stop being a parenthesis and become freedom again.
